166 YEARBOOK, PUBLIC MUSEUM^ MILWAUKEE [Vol. II. 



No, when an Osage dies, his next of kin goes to the officer of his clan 

 that keeps the wahobi and gives him a horse. 'I want you to help me 

 dry my eyes,' he says to the leader. 'Hau,' says the officer, and he 

 just sits there, smoking. But six months later he calls together the 

 young men of his clan, and they go on the warpath. The old fellow 

 goes ahead and carries that wahobi on his back. 



"Now what's inside that wahobi, it's different from what we loways 

 have. First, there is a black bag woven of yarn twisted out of buffalo 

 wool. Then there is a small sack of tanned deerskin, and next there 

 is a buffalo bladder, and inside that bladder there is the main leading 

 Osage war medicine. It's a dried hawk, and on its tail there are tied 

 just lots of pieces of men's scalps. Yes, and they've got scalps tied on 

 the outside, too. Lots of them. You see, when anyone in the clan dies, 

 they have to kill an enemy and put his scalp in the bundle to make up 

 for their loss. That's what makes those Osages so bad. When they go 

 out that way, and when they see someone and open their sacred wahobi 

 and sing their war songs, then they have to go on and kill and scalp him, 

 even if they find out that he is a friend, or a member of a tribe with 

 whom they are at peace, or even another Osage. That bundle can't be 

 closed again without the scalp to put in it. My, my friend, those Osages 

 are bad ! Everybody hates them ! They even cut the heads off the 

 people they kill and carry them home with them, if they have time. 

 We always used to hate to go anywhere near the Osage Nation, be- 

 cause, no matter how strong a peace we had made, or how many times 

 we had carried the peace pipes, or smoked horses with them, they 

 might be 'wanting to cease mourning.' 



"Well, one time, mebbeso forty years ago, we loways lost some 

 horses. I was the leading one they chose to go out and hunt for them, 

 but there was another fellow, a half-breed, named Duroin. I was 

 glad he was going because he was an older man than I was, and he 

 savvied pretty well how to get along in this country. You see we 

 loways had only just come from Nebraska, and we were new to Okla- 

 homa yet. 



"We found the trail of those horses, and it took us away over on the 

 Arkansas river. We were out, two, three days, and on the fourth day, 

 pretty near sundown, the horses we rode were pretty well fagged out. 

 Just as we were coming over a knoll, Duroin, who was riding ahead, he 

 saw something, and he held up his hand ! Quiet ! 'Takuri ?' I asked 

 him. That's loway for 'what ?' 'Osage, heap of 'em, coming this way ! 



